Scenario, you want any assets that remain after you die to essentially vaporize so no one (person, institution, Government, Church, Charity) can benefit from them.

In simplistic terms you simply want to burn the pile of assets that represents your estate so no one benefits from the value of your estate. You do not want to give it charity, the Government or anyone, you want your wealth irradiated. Is there a legal mechanism to do so? I know that you legally cannot have money burnt.

BY the way, I did not post this to stir debate. I simply want the answer. If you happen to know for a fact how to go about this I would appreciate the information but I am not interested in debating why someone would want to do this, morality, ethics etc.

Accumulate cash for spending. Any such cash you accumulate for purchases - bury it in a secret place known only to you. If you die before it is spend, it will never be found abd used for anyone's benefit.

chinto wrote:Scenario, you want any assets that remain after you die to essentially vaporize so no one (person, institution, Government, Church, Charity) can benefit from them.

In simplistic terms you simply want to burn the pile of assets that represents your estate so no one benefits from the value of your estate. You do not want to give it charity, the Government or anyone, you want your wealth irradiated. Is there a legal mechanism to do so? I know that you legally cannot have money burnt.

The solution is embedded in your question. Giving it all to the government, preferably the feds, is the surest way to get it quickly vaporized.

"Often the remedy causes the disease. It is by no means the least of life's rules: to let things alone." |
Baltasar Gracián, S.J., The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Maxim 121

Gill wrote:Put everything in an immediate annuity and spend all the payments as received.
Gill

Interesting...the trouble comes in with a large amount of money being able to actually spend all of the proceeds from the annuity.

Great idea, unfortunately if invalidates one of the OP's tenets: "...so no one (person, institution, Government, Church, Charity) can benefit from them." I'd say the insurance company is an institution (corporation) that will be benefitting from any monies NOT paid out if the annuitant dies prior to what the actuarial table says.

Second problem: Is it possible to put 100% of your assets into an annuity? Even if you can put 100% into an annuity...it can create "warped incentives":

Putting too much into annuities, on the other hand, also creates warped incentives. Authorities in Japan recently tracked down centenarians. One gentleman, supposedly 111, had in fact died three decades earlier; his mummified corpse was found in his bed. His daughter was collecting his pension.

All money will be spent. The only questions are: when and by whom? Only 4 options:

You can spend it now
You can spend it later
You can give it to others now to spend (charity/family)
You can give it to others later to spend (through inheritance)

I think since you want it to be used up and not by another, that really only leaves options 1 and 2.

I once thought, "What if the government didn't allow wealth transfer and just erased the value of one's money at one's death, as if putting the balance down to $0?" What would happen? Well, people would spend money as soon as they earned it. There would be no incentive to save because if you died with money left over no one would get to use it, so why not use it now as soon as you get it? Fortunately, it doesn't work that way. Though, that doesn't explain the paltry savings rate in this country (but I digress). I think that's what you are sort of coming up with. A $0 balance at death regardless of what money is actually there. Since it doesn't work that way (money left in an estate HAS to be passed on to pay debts, inheritors, and eventually governments (states now are going after unclaimed money after a few years of being unclaimed) I'd say you've got no other choice but to spend it before you die. So, spend it as soon as you earn it and have nothing in savings that has the potential to be passed on. However, I don't advise this stategy.

"Invest we must." -- Jack Bogle |
“The purpose of investing is not to simply optimise returns and make yourself rich. The purpose is not to die poor.” -- William Bernstein

Gill wrote:Put everything in an immediate annuity and spend all the payments as received.
Gill

Interesting...the trouble comes in with a large amount of money being able to actually spend all of the proceeds from the annuity.

That's easily adjusted. Buy an annuity that roughly covers the amount you can easily spend. Then take the rest, and handle it appropriately. If you only want to "destroy" the money remaining at death, then take that excess and give it away. If you want to destroy it too, then choose whatever is creative or convenient.

Buy gold bullion and cast the bars into the Marianas Trench, or Mauna Loa, or whatever place you'd like to visit.

Buy bitcoin, send it to yourself, and delete your private key.

Buy currency, burn it, and see whether anyone actually shows up to put you in jail.

Buy Rembrandt paintings and use linseed-oil-soaked rags to wipe the paint off the canvas.

You could also, of course, just put it in your will that your executor is supposed to do these things with your estate, and pick a reliable executor. You'd best give the executor a big gift before you die so that he isn't tempted to pay himself whatever executors are legally entitled to pay themselves.

I like the elaborate wealth-depleting funeral suggestion. Spend it on ritual. Make it endless.

Keeping a mortgage close to full value on property would take care of the house; ditto for auto loans, etc.
Selling costs would probably eat up any residual value given that it couldn't be an exact match.

Or buy lots of things on credit, so any remaining assets in the estate would be distributed among the creditors.
(Or charge things like vacations, which have no remaining value.)
But be SURE that this is what you want to do, without risk of changing your mind, unless you have ongoing income to change your mind.
That ongoing income would need to be something that ends with you.

And consider an SPIA for at least some of the money on hand, but make sure there is no "guarantee" provision or such.

Or is this a significant sum in total, such that some of these strategies might become too tedious to implement?
I don't know if there are limits on amounts that can be used to purchase a single life SPIA.

So what I am hearing is there really is no way to simply eliminate your estate at death. you have to go through a number of machinations that effectively means you need to know about when you will die. etc. etc in order to dispose of your assets. Which is rather what I thought. Legally there just is no simple mechanism to erase the value of your estate.

I want to thank you for participating. I see, I need to learn about what a bitcoin is...my ignorance on that topic is appalling. By the way, this was not merely academic, I know someone who wishes to do this.

To destroy wealth upon one's passing seems to be a signal that one does not care about one's fellow man, about humanity that will go on beyond one's own lifespan.

I assume that the individual in question accumulated assets, not living in remote Alaska entirely upon his/her own devices, but rather, living within a society, helped by what had been built before his/her birth, by what fellow citizens did during his/her lifespan, and through relationships with others.

To then effectively spurn all that, spurn society, by being eager to destroy assets that could benefit others, seems quite anti-social and wrong.

This doesn't mean that the person in question should or must leave the assets to the disliked nephew, or whoever else may have perhaps caused pain or abandonment in his/her life. But somewhere, there must be people or organizations that the individual looks upon with favor.

Another possibility is that the individual in question is profoundly depressed, angry, or whatever, and is perhaps lashing out at the world in anger or disappointment about his/her own mortality, an unexpected disease, or whatever. If that may be the case, perhaps appropriate counseling is in order...

Why not buy a TON of bitcoin/etherium then simply lose the private key!
Or why not buy a bunch of gold and hide it in a treasure chest!

One site you can buy the bitcoin in: https://www.coinbase.com/
However they have daily limits and want some ID, but you can do a simple ACH transfer to get the bitcoin. It's important you set up a private wallet that is separate from Coinbase, because if you don't after several years the wallet might become their property. If you do a private wallet, the bitcoin/ether will forever be lost in the void.

Last edited by ether161 on Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Is it still possible to have a numbered Swiss bank account? Put all assets in the account, memorize the number and do not memorialize the existence of the account in any other way. This probably fails at the requirements to have no institution benefit, since the bank will use the funds to lend money. Maybe holding bitcoin in the same manner is the better solution.

It seems that no matter the process someone benefits. Throwing gold into the ocean benefits the person it was bought from and others owning gold in that the supply is now incrementally smaller. Even burning money benefits the government in that those notes never need to be replaced or exchanged for T-bills, etc. I would hope the person with this wish finds a cause or charity.

Next up I like burying the money and leaving it all to chance. Where does this person live? Just for interest sake!

There are rare coins that go for quite a lot of money. You can spend your money on such rare coins and then ruin them pretty easily, and your money will have vanished. It might be even easier to buy rare paper money and then run it through a shredder.

Personally I like the treasure chest idea, and you could do a complicated scavenger hunt with clues along with it. Doing it while you're still alive could be fun.

But in general, financial assets like stocks, bonds, cash, even Bitcoins or gold can't have their value destroyed. You can destroy the physical bills and maybe melt and disperse the gold, but the gold isn't what had the value. The value was that those things are all of relatively limited supply (Fed quantative easing policies not withstanding), so if you destroy a US dollar, all other dollars are worth a tiny bit more and likewise with the others. In a sense you're giving away the value to everyone who holds that asset in proportion to their current ownership.

You could buy physical things and destroy them of course, but then you'd have paid for them and the people who bought them from would benefit.

Plenty of people die every day with no more possessions than the clothes they are wearing. If you don't want to go to that extreme, it would be very easy to deliberately die in debt and direct that the executor of your will incinerate your personal possessions or sell them to satisfy part of your debt.

1. liquidate all of your holdings to cash;
2. buy (a) a sledgehammer, (b) matches, and (c) an eBay item that costs the exact amount of the remaining estate;
3. smash the eBay item to smithereens using the sledgehammer;
4. burn the sledgehammer with one of the matches, and throw the matchbox in the fire too; and
5. throw the charred head of the sledgehammer into a lake.

You could skip the matches and just chuck the whole sledgehammer into the lake, but then some fisherman will reel it in someday and be able to use it.

I'm still thinking that a SPIA is the best bet. If they own a home, take out a reverse mortgage. The insurance company doesn't really "benefit" when the person dies, the death was built into the price and payout of the SPIA. I suppose that logic may not hold if the person is terminally ill or suicidal (which may be a real possibility considering the question). If they have insight into when their life will end, it's a bit easier to sell everything, use the proceeds on something consumable (some expensive vacations or the like), and wrack up enough debt to cover any remaining assets.

A SPIA just delays the problem - turning into one of those Brewster's Millions scenarios. If you have enough money to worry about this and not just leave a house full of mostly junk, the money from the SPIA will pile up since you're trying not to give it away or spend it on stuff that will be taken by others after you're gone.

chinto wrote:In simplistic terms you simply want to burn the pile of assets that represents your estate so no one benefits from the value of your estate. You do not want to give it charity, the Government or anyone, you want your wealth irradiated. Is there a legal mechanism to do so?

Seriously, in order to destroy assets as simply and efficiently as possible you would want something high value, unobtrusive, portable, easily destroyed or lost, and with as few legal entanglements as possible. How about: going to the diamond district and quietly buying loose diamonds, then charter a boat and throw them into the deep ocean? For added dramatic effect, play the theme music from Titanic in the background.

Disclaimer: nothing written here should be taken as legal advice, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Gill wrote:Put everything in an immediate annuity and spend all the payments as received.
Gill

Interesting...the trouble comes in with a large amount of money being able to actually spend all of the proceeds from the annuity.

Great idea, unfortunately if invalidates one of the OP's tenets: "...so no one (person, institution, Government, Church, Charity) can benefit from them." I'd say the insurance company is an institution (corporation) that will be benefitting from any monies NOT paid out if the annuitant dies prior to what the actuarial table says.

Given these considerations, the best option is to destroy it all now and get your worth down to zero or negative as soon as possible. Then live out the remainder of your life in the direst poverty.

This the the best solution, it's the only proven method with a long track record. Billions of human beings have employed with great success at meeting the goal of dying and leaving behind nothing or value to anyone.

What I am looking for is a legal means to eliminate assets after the death of a person not before.

The party in question's hobby and lifetime obsession has been the accumulation of wealth via investment, to the exclusion of family. He was dealt the death card and wants to continue playing the stock market game until the bitter end...which is why he does not want to liquidate and dispose of his assets before hand. The game to him is to see how high he can grow the pile and then for it to be vaporized (sort of like getting the high score on an arcade game, if it helps frame the state of mind).

He lives off his modest pension(19K) and is not old enough to collect SS. He sold his auto and house and now lives in a extended stay motel. His portfolio is now in excess of 6 million. So at death, he will have a few clothing items, a laptop, and misc grooming accessories and a couple of hundred in his checking account which the hotel draws on and of course his portfolio. So outside his portfolio, everything else is likely in the $500-1000 range. He has pre-paid for his disposal.

He did consult with a couple of local estate planners who had allegedly had nothing to offer except pre-death solutions, charities, endowments etc. The reason I posted in this forum, is there seems to be a lot of people who know a lot of arcane tidbits in regard to things financial.

Once again, the goal is to dispose of assets after death so no entity benefits from them.

Thank you for any assistance you care to afford.

Last edited by chinto on Thu Jun 15, 2017 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Now that you provide the actual stipulations, it's getting harder. The money not only cannot be spent in advance, it has to be available for stock trading until he says his "rosebud".

To paraphase Mr. Mcguire: One word, cryonics.

He could arrange for it all to be used for his own cryonic preservation. Granted, it *might* benefit someone, but unlikely. It's a good bet it won't. He likes playing the stock market anyway so a speculative solution of this sort, taking your best shot at a lost cause, might appeal to him.

And he could have the fun of planning the future investment of his cyropreservation trust fund. He could, in effect, trade after death in benefit of a lost cause.

PS: I just got two movie allusions into one post. Can anyone beat that?

chinto wrote:Sigh...
What I am looking for is a legal means to eliminate assets after the death of a person not before.

Assuming he has no heirs, the best thing would be to make sure he dies intestate. Thus he must destroy any and all existing wills and/or trusts. At death, his assets will then escheat to the state and thus be vaporized in short order.

"Often the remedy causes the disease. It is by no means the least of life's rules: to let things alone." |
Baltasar Gracián, S.J., The Art of Worldly Wisdom, Maxim 121

celia wrote:1. Have your executor shred it all into tiny bits and throw it in the trash/ocean/bury it.

2. Literally, vaporize it. Put it in boiling water and boil for 24 hours (don't know if this would work).

3. Throw it into a compost pile and put wet compost on top of it to make it decompose faster.

4. Take it with you when you die. (Have someone put it in your pockets before you are buried.)

5. Have it shredded, then boiled, then thrown into a compost pile, then buried with you???

You can never be sure the executor will actually carry out your wishes exactly. Reminds me of something that happened with a friend from church died a few years back. All his regular golfing buddies were pall bearers, and each in turn scotch taped a brand new shiny ball to the casket. The last guy removed one of the shiny balls and replaced it with one that looked pretty bad. He said "When Bob found a lost ball on the course, he'd put his good one in his pocket and continue play with the one he found. I'm sure he won't mind if I switch out this old cut ball for one of those new ones."

Don't gamble; take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up, then sell it. If it don't go up, don't buy it. - Will Rogers

Given the stipulations, I would say that Bitcoin would be the best way to "destroy" the portfolio. He could set up a Bitcoin wallet now, memorize the private key, and, right before death comes, liquidate all his holdings and buy Bitcoin, sending it to his private wallet. Once he dies, it would be effectively gone. If he can't time it, he could leave clear instructions in his will to have the portfolio liquidated in the same fashion and the Bitcoin sent to his wallet.

chinto wrote:In simplistic terms you simply want to burn the pile of assets that represents your estate so no one benefits from the value of your estate. You do not want to give it charity, the Government or anyone, you want your wealth irradiated. Is there a legal mechanism to do so?

Seriously, in order to destroy assets as simply and efficiently as possible you would want something high value, unobtrusive, portable, easily destroyed or lost, and with as few legal entanglements as possible. How about: going to the diamond district and quietly buying loose diamonds, then charter a boat and throw them into the deep ocean? For added dramatic effect, play the theme music from Titanic in the background.

Following this line, he arrange to have his estate invested in sand art and then destoryed. Here's a sand mandela being created and destroyed:

Another one I just thought of. He could arrange to have his corpse/ashes and personal effects launched into space. There are cheap ways of doing this, but I'm sure a $6 million option could be arranged. He would then literally burn up his portfolio, as most of it would be used for the fuel and booster, both of which burn up and leave only smoke behind.

He could create a "zombie trust". He could probably arrange to put all his trading money in the trust and trade stocks to increase the value of the trust. It could go on autopilot after his death with no more trading.

The function of the trust could be to answer the question posed by this thread: How could the trust be liquidated with no benefit to anyone.

Or perhaps the trust could just be set up to exists without benefiting anyone.

But there is a stipulation missing from your OP and other clarifications. The goal is to carry out this guy's wishes concerning his estate. It benefits the deceased. The actual goal is to benefit no one but this one guy.

The problem with zombie trusts is that the government may seize them. That happened in the UK. The Trust of London was formed from a bunch of charitable trusts that had narrow dated missions like one to maintain the oil lamp at the corner of Billingsgate "for ever" and for for killing ladybirds in Cornhill. See the book Public Good by Private Means.

deskjockey wrote:Given the stipulations, I would say that Bitcoin would be the best way to "destroy" the portfolio. He could set up a Bitcoin wallet now, memorize the private key, and, right before death comes, liquidate all his holdings and buy Bitcoin, sending it to his private wallet. Once he dies, it would be effectively gone. If he can't time it, he could leave clear instructions in his will to have the portfolio liquidated in the same fashion and the Bitcoin sent to his wallet.

chinto wrote:Scenario, you want any assets that remain after you die to essentially vaporize so no one (person, institution, Government, Church, Charity) can benefit from them.

In simplistic terms you simply want to burn the pile of assets that represents your estate so no one benefits from the value of your estate. You do not want to give it charity, the Government or anyone, you want your wealth irradiated. Is there a legal mechanism to do so? I know that you legally cannot have money burnt.

My first inclination is that it can't be done. Someone will benefit directly or indirectly.

Gill wrote:Put everything in an immediate annuity and spend all the payments as received.
Gill

Insurance company and agent make money.

chinto wrote:

Gill wrote:Put everything in an immediate annuity and spend all the payments as received.
Gill

Interesting...the trouble comes in with a large amount of money being able to actually spend all of the proceeds from the annuity.

Plus all those folks you spend the extra annuity cash on benefit.

Most people usually want someone or some institution to benefit after their death (i.e. leave inheritance to charity instead of heirs). Some may even want harm to come to some cause (i.e. fund the anti-[blank] moment/PAC), but I can't think why anyone would equally be for and against every entity and care that they leave no footprints or make any ripples.